Hair Tutorial

Uhm...OK.  This is the hair we are making boys and girls. :)  So, you will need to run on over to Pinkland and snag the Pillar Base....I couldn't bear to leave her naked. LMAO.

Also, I use PSP 7...but I am sure that you can adapt to another program.

Please feel free to save these images as reference...but no cheating and tracing,,,cause you're not gonna learn anything that way!

For your convenience, I am using the palette below.  From left to right: Outline, shadow, normal, highlight.  Got that?  I am not covering how to make your image transparent...so, prepare your image.  For your convenience, I recommend pasting the palette onto a separate layer so that you can just pick up the colors.  K?

Brush settings:  Set your brush to the following settings AND THEN, DON'T MESS WITH THEM:

Pick up your outline color and roughly sketch the outline of the hair.  I usually do it in a couple of chunks rather than one big mass or a lot of little lines.

Fill in all areas with your "normal" shade. 

Start to clean up the outline...I like to leave some of the inside lines alone as guides for the shadows.  I almost always leave the outline of the part as well.

OK, pick up your shadow color and shade her part.....this is the easiest part of shading.

Continue shading...following the basic outlines and shape of her hair.  Please notice a few things.  First, I vary the thickness of the shadows and second, not every shadow is a continuous line from her scalp to her part.  I also try and leave good size chunks of hair the "normal" shade....

Lastly, I pick up the highlight color and shade somewhere in the middle of the Normal areas that I left...you will note, that these do not run the length of her head.  Typically, highlights run around the crown of the head, and on sections that curve....

To finish, I take the outline color and add a few stray hairs...and holy moly thats it.

Please note:  Uhm...if you make a doll using this tutorial (pixel by pixel), you may want to give me credit...because thats a nice thing to do...because others  may like to see it...and because if you and Lucy Lou both follow this tutorial and both put up identical dolls...well, you may potentially be accused of Frankendolling...I have seen it happen...and, then, you just have to explain you used a tutorial...and well, why not head that off at the pass?  ITS NOT REQUIRED.